We've already seen some heavy discussion on Mono and C# here on OSNews the past few weeks, as it became clear the patent situation regarding the ECMA parts of Mono was anything but faith inspiring. This issue seems to be resolved now: Microsoft has made a legally binding promise not to sue anyone who uses or distributes implementations of said ECMA standards. Following this news, Mono will be split in two; the ECMA standard parts, and the rest.

"So GNOME will have the covered parts of Mono installed by default ... that is almost a guaranteed outcome now.

What this does is to allow decisions regarding the covered portions to be made on a technical basis. Mono has some problems on that front; Notably, resource usage. But those issues have, so far, mostly gotten lost in the heated political debate.

This will quite possibly cause some defections from GNOME.

Ever the KDE troll, huh, Hal? An alternative, or perhaps complementary view, would be of an influx of devs who prefer a safer, managed language to the buffer overflow minefield that is C++. I'm hardly an enthusiastic Mono/C# fan. But at least this legally binding promise, and clear separation of code, will neutralize the political doomsayers and allow the debate to move on to matters of technical merit. "